About Biomphalaria glabrata

Freshwater snails of the genus Biomphalaria are intermediate hosts for flatworm parasites of the genus Schistosoma, causative pathogens of human schistosomiasis, in South America, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, Africa, Madagascar and the Arabian peninsula. Biomphalaria glabrata, a neotropical snail, is the major intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni.

Patently infected B. glabrata snails shed and seed their aquatic environment with numerous free-swimming cercariae, the stage of S. mansoni that is infective for humans. Water contact leads to infection because cercariae can actively penetrate human skin. Inside the human host, schistosome parasites mature and reproduce sexually. Parasite eggs are released in the feces and/or urine of infected humans. Parasite larvae called miracidia hatch from the eggs and swim to locate and infect B. glabrata for completion of the S. mansoni life cycle.

BB02 strain

Biomphalaria glabrata snails were collected by Omar dos Santos Carvalho (CPRR/Fiocruz) in the south east of Brazil (19o59' S 44o02' W), Belo Horizonte, district of Barreiro. Morphology-based species identification was confirmed by PCR_RFLP; 16S rDNA, NADH dehydrogenase 1 sequences (AY737280, AY737281). Lab-reared offspring of the wild caught snails proved susceptible to multiple strains of Schistosoma mansoni. BB02 snails are maintained as inbred lines at several research groups. A BAC library is available for this strain from the Arizona Genomics Institute (Tucson AZ, USA).

Genomic DNA was extracted from whole body soft tissues minus the reproductive organs of adult BB02 snails (Coen Adema, UNM) and applied for genome sequencing at The Genomics Institute (TGI), Washington University, St Louis MO.

Source: VectorBase

Picture credit: Fred A. Lewis, Yung-san Liang, Nithya Raghavan & Matty Knight, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons (Image source)

Taxonomy ID 6526

Data source VectorBase

More information and statistics